Badass

 "Angelina, I really appreciate that you say things like 'Rosa Parks was a badass lady' in class. It makes me feel more comfortable saying things like that." 

Badass. Always a compliment, safe for high school classrooms. 

Lessons

Wednesday afternoons at the Woolman Semester are always a welcome change in tone for me:  after lunch we have half an hour of meeting for worship, followed by half an hour of worship sharing, then chores, then community meeting.  I work with the group of students, currently called the Quaker Life Committee, who care for community meeting and come up with queries for us all to contemplate together during worship sharing. 

This week the query was: "We've made a lot of decisions at Woolman to simplify our lives. Which of those decisions resonate with you? Which do you think will stick after you leave here?" 

My worship sharing group met in a cozy, a little-too-warm corner of the meetinghouse. By the end of our thoughtful go-round, several of us had gotten drowsy. I managed to rally, but some of my students succumbed to sleepiness. 

It was one of those moments when I realized the large umbrella that is my job: teacher, cook, driver, college and life advisor.... and now alarm clock. 

I tried to get them going, and reminded them that they would be late for chores. They resisted, lying limp (though conscious) on the floor. I decided tickling would not be appropriate, so I banged  a little on the piano and played what I remember of "Edelweiss" from eighth grade keyboard class. 

They started making jokes about nonviolent resistance. 

"We're just using what you taught us!" one quipped. 

"Yes," I replied, with my best snarky voice, "and I am not amused!" 

Then they started singing "We Shall Overcome." 

I'm not sure how I emerged with my pride intact, but they did eventually get up off the floor and we all walked out of the meetinghouse together and went our seperate ways for chores. We were only a little late. 

Later that night while some of us were doing dinner clean up, two of the girls called over Jasmine, our environmental sciences teacher, and demonstrated how they had used the tenets of permaculture while washing pots: use the water more than once, from one slightly cleaner pot to one super dirty pot. "It's stacking!" they exclaimed,  laughing, while pantomining their actions, sans pots. 

So, what do I like about my job at the Woolman Semester? 

We laugh. A lot.

The lessons of the classroom are applied, for better or for worse, all the time. 

And my relationship with my students goes beyond the table we sit around during class twice a week. We cook, clean, joke and share together. That's the kind of environment I want to teach in. That's the kind of environment I want to learn in. 

The Guest House

The Guest House

 

This being human is a guesthouse.

Every morning a new arrival.

 

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

Some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

 

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

Who violently sweep your house

Empty of its furniture,

Still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

For some new delight.

 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

Meet them at the door laughing,

And invite them in.

 

Be grateful for whoever comes,

Because each has been sent

As a guide from beyond.

 

-   - Jelaluddin Rumi (Persian Empire, 1200s), as translated by Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi

 

Query

What thoughts and emotions visit you on a regular basis? Are you able to explain their origins, or are they sometimes a mystery? How do they affect your life?

 

When you look at your personal history timeline*, what events or times in your life do you have a lot of emotion about? What are those emotions?

* For those of you not in class, we drew/wrote about our lives in terms of spirituality, ideas and philosophies, big life events, emotions, sexuality/relationships, etc. It was an exercise both in creatively presenting visual information...and in telling our stories and listening to others'. 

 

How I grade (high school) essays

Find a quiet place where concentration is possible. 

Couch at home is good. Makes it sort of feel like not-work. 

Use a non-red pen. Purple is good, as is bright green or blue. 

Stay hydrated.  Hydration is key. 

Scribble legibly in margins. Use "?" and "HUH?" because I am a cool teacher. 

Include lots of questions in the comments. 

Take breaks (fold laundry). 

Utilize chill background music when needed. Emmylou Harris is good. 

Slow and steady. Slow and steady. 

Break up the difficult kids with the always-a-dream-to-read kids. 

Laugh. A lot. 

Big questions

“...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. “
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet


Query
What big questions do I ask on a regular basis (consciously or unconsciously)? Who do I ask them to – myself, my family, friends, society, the universe, God? How do these questions – and whether or not they are answered – influence how I am in the world?

Day in the life

6:00 am - Wake up 

7:15 - Quick breakfast with some of my students, last minute prep before class

8:00 - 12:00 - Two back-to-back Peace Studies classes. Documentaries, zines, violence and shame, Walter Wink 

12:00 - Lunch

12:30 - Dish crew 

1:15 - Rare moment of quiet while the kids are in Nonviolent Communication class 

3:00 - Shared work. Harvest apples and pears (!) in our orchard, process them 

5:00 - 6:00 - Back-to-back advisee meetings outside under a tree 

7:00 - Head home "early" for the night 

So far I love it. 

Prompts

I teach a class at the Woolman Semester called Humanities & Ethics. My joke has become that the title of the class is a little bit of a misnomer - it's not about the traditional academic disciplines of humanities and ethics that you might encounter elsewhere in college. Rather, it's an experiential (read: no homework) class about our own humanity and our own ethics. The goals of the class are processing, introspection, storytelling and story-listening, and discernment. It's about exploring who we are, what we believe, what we are experiencing at Woolman, and how we are in relationship with the world and the people around us. 

I'm planning to incorporate a query, in the Quaker tradition of queries, and a quote into each class, often as journaling prompts. Queries are searching questions used for individual or corporate introspection and discernment - sometimes meetings will use queries at the start of worship or in yearly meeting sessions, other times in the context of worship sharing. Quotes will be a way to introduce students to a wide range of voices - sometimes it will be poetry, sometimes prose. Rumi and Rilke are on deck for upcoming weeks. 

I'd hoping to make a habit of posting queries and quotes here weekly. Feel free to answer them in the comments, or to suggest other resources. 

So to begin: 

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." 

- Howard Thurman (writer, educator, theologian, civil rights activist) 

Query: What makes you come alive?